Sports

Sarnia native Leigh Cunningham's broadcasting career brings him back home

Sarnia native Leigh Cunningham has been involved with over 1,000 Ontario Hockey League broadcasts over the last 19 years. The 49-year-old hockey enthusiast has returned to his hometown this season as the radio play-by-play voice of the Sarnia Sting. Terry Bridge/Sarnia Observer/Postmedia Network

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Leigh Cunningham has been behind the microphone for over 1,000 broadcasts of Ontario Hockey League games.

With all that experience under the headset, does the 49-year-old play-by-play caller ever get nervous?

“Positive adrenaline,” he countered. “For me, if I'm not a little bit nervous about 20 minutes, half an hour before a game I wonder what's going on.

“I think that little surge of adrenaline that you get half an hour or so before a game, it brings you to where you need to be in order to execute the broadcast.”

This season Cunningham, born and raised in Sarnia, has returned home to execute radio broadcasts of the Sarnia Sting's home and away games.

It's actually the second go-round for him with his hometown team as he was part of the local TV station's on-air crew during Steven Stamkos' final OHL season.

At the time it seemed like an ideal fit.

“I thought that was maybe going to be my last stop,” said Cunningham, who had previously voiced games over radio and TV airwaves for the London Knights, North Bay Centennials and Windsor Spitfires.

But shortly into the 2008-09 season, Cunningham left Terry Doyle and the Cogeco TV booth to join the Saginaw Spirit as team president Craig Goslin recruited him to be the team's director of broadcasting and communications as well as its play-by-play man.

Although he took the job, initially he wasn't sure how long it would last.

“It didn't know if I was going to be there for six months or six years,” he said.

It turned out to be seven years.

Most of his on-air time was spent beside colour commentator Dennis Desrosiers, while on non-game days he was busy promoting the Spirit brand throughout the Michigan city.

“That was a great experience for me,” he said. “Trying to talk about hockey and sell hockey and preach hockey in a market that was embracing the OHL but didn't know every little nuance about it, the players that had come from it, the history.

“That was a neat challenge that I really embraced, and I think we made some headway there.”

But this past summer Cunningham, now in his 19th year of OHL broadcasting, opted to join the Sting as the team's play-by-play voice on CHOK while also filling a front office role.

“It's great to be back. This is home,” he said. “I'm almost certain that I wouldn't have left Saginaw for any other situation than to come back here.

“It's been a whirlwind.”

This season he's perched in the press box beside Patrick Desrochers, a retired pro goaltender who played for the Sting in the late 1990s and is now the team's goalie coach.

“I think that we've bonded really well pretty quickly,” he said. “It's great to work with somebody who played in the league.”

Cunningham has always been a hockey junkie. While packing up for one of his recent moves, he came across a middle school report card where a comment from one of his St. Helen's teachers pinpointed his passion.

“'If Leigh spent as much time with his schoolwork as he does reading about Bobby Orr, he'd be in good shape,'” Cunningham recalled. “I kind of smiled years later (reading that).”

When he wasn't reading up on the Boston Bruins' Hall of Fame defenceman, the St. Patrick's high school graduate was usually either at the rink skating with his Sarnia Minor Athletic Association team or joining in a neighbourhood ball hockey game.

“I loved the game,” said the lifelong New York Rangers' fan. “Hockey was a big part of growing up in Sarnia for me.

“I always knew as a kid that I really wanted to get a crack at doing play-by-play.”

His first crack came with the Knights as he joined long-time broadcaster Pete James on London radio station CJBK for the 1998-99 season. It turned out to be an extended spring as the squad reached Game 7 of the OHL championship series before falling to the Belleville Bulls as Jonathan Cheechoo scored four goals in the finale.

“It was a great run on the ice to start things off,” Cunningham said.

It turned out to be just a one-season stint with the station, though.

“It was a massive disappointment when it was only a one-year thing,” he acknowledged. “But you pick yourself up a little bit.”

With support from some of the Knights, including then-head coach Gary Agnew, he reappeared the following season on the TV side with Rogers.

From there he headed north. Former North Bay Centennials' team president — and current Flint Firebirds president — Costa Papista convinced him to make the move with a full-time job offer, which was enticing after working other gigs to make ends meet during his early London days.

“So I just drove up there, didn't know a soul, and we went from there,” he said.

The Centennials relocated to Saginaw and became the Spirit in 2002, but Cunningham didn't make the move — at least not right away.

“It didn't work out immigration-wise at that time,” he said. “But years later I was able to do it so it was — everything kind of came in a full 360.”

First, though, it was back to the Knights' TV operation where he was part of a memorable time in the franchise's history as they moved into the John Labatt Centre and captured the 2005 Memorial Cup.

In 2006, Cunningham shifted gears again to voice Windsor Spitfires' games over the radio. But it was one long winter as the drive from Sarnia, coupled with an unreliable car, made the journey fairly arduous.

“The commute became really, really tough,” Cunningham recalled.

Travelling has, and always will be, a significant part of broadcasting major junior hockey, but now that he's rejoined the Sting it's a little easier — he can catch up on some sleep while riding the team bus.

“Hockey season's an interesting one, it seems like a series of long naps,” he said. “But it's great, it's all part of it.”

In a fitting twist, Cunningham hit the 1,000-game mark last season as the Spirit visited Sarnia. Despite being part of the guest team's broadcast, the Sting acknowledged the milestone on the centre ice scoreboard during a break in the action.

“It meant a lot to me,” he said. “It was really cool to have that done in my hometown.”

And chances are, about 30-minutes prior to that game he had a rush of positive adrenaline.

LOOKING BACK WITH LEIGH

Reflecting on his 19-year career, here are some top performers Cunningham has seen come through the league in that time: